Bravo Zulu
by kilroyactual117
Summary: The Spartans of Blue Team all knew this day would come eventually. One day, whether they ended up returning home as heroes, or face down in the mud, the war would end for them. Now, with no guidance and no knowledge of life outside of war, they set out to build a life for themselves. Bravo Zulu Spartans. You've made it this far. Now It's up to you to figure out the rest.
1. Chapter 1: Reunited

**AN: Nice to see you again Spartans.**

 **This story is one I've had sitting around for quite a while. I've been looking for a way to have something to write to help me clear my head, so that I can focus on, and do a better job with, other stories. As such, I don't think this story will ever truly be complete. My idea is to continue it effectively until I completely run out of ideas, or it drags on for long enough that I stop and start a new story in a similar fashion.**

 **This story will basically contain a lot of my drabbles for various ships I enjoy writing for. I'm hoping to include Vaz/Naomi, Dare/Buck, Palmer/Lasky, Fred/Kelly, and of course John/Linda, as well as any others that come up and any OC characters I decide to include. This will probably be, in general, a great deal more domestic than anything else I've written, but don't count out the occasional action sequence. It's all going to be very AU, so be advised, for the purposes of this story from this point forward anything that happened past the ending cut scene of Halo-4 is officially declared non-canon unless I decide otherwise.**

 **I hope you enjoy Spartans.**

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Every war has its losers.

When a conflict is examined by history, usually a quick distinction can be made between who won and who lost by the body count, the land taken, or who simply lasted the longest. Usually it's never that simple to the men and woman who fought those battles. How can a soldier count a battle a victory, just because a useless patch of land was taken, when someone they loved was killed taking it? How can a commander count a battle a victory if his troops feel that he sent too many of them to their deaths?

John-117 began to wonder, after drifting in space for what felt like days, or weeks, or months, if that same conundrum hadn't just showed up to bite him.

" _Infinity_? Pelican six-niner, we've found him," came a staticky voice over John's radio, the first sound he had heard since he had been ejected into the vacuum of space.

He knew he should have been happy to hear any sort of sound, but he felt little, if anything, upon hearing his rescuer's voice.

How could he feel anything after losing Cortana in such a way?

She had saved him, and for what? The Didact was defeated and the war was over. He was just a relic of an age long past when men like him could have made a difference.

She should have saved herself.

He wanted to give up. He had lost too much in this war. Maybe he could convince the pelican's crew to leave him here and let him drift in peace while he made sense of all that had happened to him.

He had no idea how long it would take for him to make sense of what Cortana had made the wrong choice, hopefully it was more time than the amount of oxygen that remained in his suit could support.

The pelican's flood light shone brightly on him, and he watched as an ODST drifted into his view of the blackness, the retro rockets of his jet pack obscuring the once bright stars with flashes of hot, clinical light. The ODST gave him a thumbs up sign, which John did not return, and hooked a tow cable to the back of his armor.

He felt a slight jolt as the pelican began to reel him into its troop bay. He heard a dull thud as he hit its floor, and a slight hiss as the cabin around him pressurized.

He didn't move from his seated position as two additional ODSTs came into his view, looking down at him intently.

One of them removed his helmet and smiled down at him, an action John could hardly comprehend at a time like this.

"Well would you look at that, the savior of humanity," he said cheerfully, "glad to have you back sir. It's an honor to meet you."

The one that stood next to him removed her helmet as well and rolled her eyes before punching the ODST on her right in the shoulder.

"Sorry about him sir," she said with a slight chuckle, "he's just buttering you up so he can get an autograph."

He recoiled and looked like he was ready to respond before the third ODST stepped between the two of them, glaring at both of them.

"Cut it out," he snapped as he too removed his helmet, silencing both the ODSTs who immediately snapped to attention.

He spun to face John, a somber look of respect on his face.

"We're all truly grateful for what you did for us sir," he said, giving him a quick, snappy salute, and the other three followed in kind.

For the life of him, John couldn't find the energy to return the action.

His rank did not entitle him to the privilege of being called "sir" and saluting him was equally unacceptable.

John knew these men were simply trying to show their respect, and that they deserved to be able to laugh and smile after the end of such a long, arduous war, but he had been trained not to indulge in such things, or to encourage them, and right now his training was all that was keeping him on his feet and alive.

He nodded to the three of them and sat down in one of the pelican's crash seats, settling in for the short ride to _Infinity._

When the pilot announced they had arrived and lowered the boarding ramp, John stood and faced the back of the craft, walking quickly and blindly out of it.

He needed to get out of this armor. He needed to think and to numb himself to the pain of what he knew had just happened, and what his mind refused recognize, but what met him at the end of the pelican's boarding ramp almost made him sick.

The hangar bay was lined with Marines and Spartans in full battle dress, standing at attention and saluting him. It looked as though half the ship's personnel had turned out to greet him and give him a hero's welcome.

John stopped dead for a moment. Is that what they though of him as? A hero?

He was no hero. That title should go to those who had sacrificed the most in this war, and if anyone had sacrificed anything to win this battle, it was Cortana. Without her, he would have never have come as far as he had.

He would have never stopped Halo's activation without her knowledge, he would have never made it off High Charity without her help, he would have never escaped the Ark without her guidance, and he would never have defeated the Didact without her sacrifice.

Without her, he was nothing.

He walked slowly past the lines of soldiers. Some of the Marines had pictures of their families strapped to their chest plates, no doubt so he would see them, and nearly all of them had proud smiles on their faces.

They all believed he was the one to thank for their salvation.

He too had had a family once, a team he could truly depend on that had carried him through thick and thin and never left his side. They had been ripped apart when they needed each other most, and he hadn't been able to stop it.

He had looked through UNSC records the second he had boarded _Infinity_ for their whereabouts. He needed to know something, anything about them, even if it was just a glimmer of hope that they might possibly be alive.

What he had found had nearly crushed him.

All of his breath was knocked out of him when he read that they had been declared MIA on a shield world named Onyx, which had subsequently been destroyed by forces that both the UNSC and the Covenant barely understood.

His heart had skipped a beat when he thought about Linda, his teammate, his friend, and the only woman he had ever loved dying alone on that planet without him being able to tell her just how much purpose she had brought into his life, and his team dying with her, without him to thank them for all of the hell they had brought him through. Fred, Kelly, and Linda were the only family he had ever had. How could these men possibly claim that he had saved their families when he hadn't even been able to save his own?

He made his way quickly to the armor bay on S-deck, past rows of Spartans who didn't hold back the stares they gave him as he lumbered down the isle way of the deck, towering over each and every one of them.

He wanted to yell at them not to look at him, to tell them that he was no hero, and that he didn't deserve this.

He was just one man, and he didn't deserve to be treated like he had won the war by himself, but he restrained the outburst, just as he had been taught to do.

Piece by piece his armor was stripped from him, and when it had all fallen away he looked down at his newly revealed hands.

They were weak, pale, shriveled counterparts to their old, armored selves. His armor had protected him for so long that it defined him. It hid the weakness and the brokenness he felt so well that donning it was like wrapping himself in a new personality. Few had ever seen what lied beneath it, and fewer still had ever accepted it for what it was, and recognized that fact that, as physically strong as he was, he constantly drifted near the edge of finally giving up and shutting down as his body and mind had been screaming at him to do for years.

Now they were all dead.

When he stepped off the armor rack a crowd of Spartans surrounded him, cheering wildly and clapping for him as he pushed roughly through them, nearly knocking one or two of them to the floor as he fought to get past them. Once he did he bolted for door at the other end of Spartan town, not willing to spend another moment around so many people.

The door at the end of Spartan town slid open quickly, and he barreled through it and dashed off for the small quarters he had been assigned, brushing past soldiers, officers and civilians who no longer recognized him as anything more than another one of _Infinity's_ Spartans.

The door to his quarters parted with a hiss, and what he found caused his heart to leap into his throat.

The room was empty, save for a lone Spartan in simple, marpat fatigues with the numbers 058 embroidered onto each shoulder in black thread.

It couldn't be her. His mind had to be playing tricks on him.

The official report made it clear. There was no way she could have survived. This was just an ember of memory of her, burning bright one last time before it fizzled out and left him hollow again.

He backed away and out of his quarters, not willing to let this evil memory take control of him. If he let his mind indulge the fact that she was alive it would only crush him harder when he finally woke up and realized that she was still dead.

But as she slowly began to approach him, her mouth curled up into a small smile and her eyes etched with concern, he knew it was really her. No memory of her could ever do justice to the living, breathing, loving woman he knew.

This was the woman who had made him whole all those years ago.

She placed her hands on his shoulders and pulled him back through the threshold of the door, closing it behind him as he entered.

"Linda?" He asked breathlessly.

His expression cracked into one of hurt and longing. The emotions he felt for her began to bubble over to the surface.

He needed to know it was her. He needed to feel her voice wash over him like soothing water as it had so many times before.

"It's me John," she said as she gently placed her hands over his, her voice even and calming, "I'm here."

As her fingers began to lace between his and squeeze John closed his eyes and smiled at the contact. He let her words smooth him,

Years of being locked in armor had made him numb to any sort of external feeling other than the cold rubber and metal of the under layer of his suit, and feeling Linda's skin against his was an all out assault on his senses after so many years of feeling nothing.

Her skin was warm, and not an artificial warm like his suit's heating system gave off, but a true, gentle warmth that radiated over his skin, soothing him in ways he had never thought imaginable, and it was soft unlike anything he could describe.

It wasn't a feeling a non Spartan could understand. Only years of depravation of touch could make such a simple action mean so much.

"I thought you were dead," he nearly whispered, the pain of the thought evident in his voice.

Linda shook her head and smiled at him, her hand now trailing up his arm and over the sleeve of his his readiness gear until it rested on his cheek.

She leaned forward and pressed a quick, gentle kiss to his lips, lingering their for only a moment before pulling away and resting her forehead against his, her silky red hair swinging forward to rest against his face.

Even that simple action had brought warmth to his entire body. He felt himself slowly thaw from the cold of what had just transpired and melt into Linda's embrace.

"I'm ok," she whispered, "Don't worry."

John didn't have the words to convey his happiness, or even to respond.

He wrapped his arms around her and stood silent and still for another minute. His mind was still trying to process the shock of her being here. Despite his reluctance to act, Linda didn't seem to grow impatient at all.

She had always had more patience with him than he deserved. Maybe it came from her years of stalking targets in enemy territory, waiting days just to get the perfect shot.

He appreciated it more than she could have ever imagined.

When his mind finally caught up to his body he pressed another kiss to her lips. It was gentle and slow, with barely any force behind it. Part of him seemed to think that if he pushed to hard on her Linda might simply fade away like a fond memory, but the way her arms wrapped around his neck let him know she wasn't going anywhere.

"Fred? Kelly? Are they alive?" He asked when they broke.

Linda nodded and smiled gently at him.

"We're alive. All of us. With you and Cortana it'll be just like old times," she said, placing a reassuring hand gently on his cheek.

The mention of Cortana, however, made him lose his breath and his eyes become cold and focused. He knew he wouldn't be able to enjoy this moment any longer. The thought of their final moments together brought him far too much pain.

Linda's eyes focused on his. Her smile dropped and a concerned looked etched itself over her face.

"John, what's wrong?" she asked, rubbing his cheek gently with her thumb.

He placed his hand over hers and stopped her before removing it from his face. As much as he enjoyed Linda's affection he felt guilty for being able to enjoy it. If Cortana had made the right choice, he wouldn't be.

"She's gone Linda," he said quietly, "I owe her my life."

Even Linda didn't know what to say after hearing that.

She took both of John's hands in hers, leaning her forehead against his and taking a deep breath before speaking.

"I can't even imagine what you're going through right now," she said.

John saw the pain in her eyes and his expression and wanted nothing more than for it to go away. The last thing he wanted was for Linda to feel burdened by his own grief.

He attempted to rebound quickly and reassure her he was alright by pressing a kiss to her lips. Linda smiled into it, falling for it just as John had hoped she would.

She began to tug at his shirt push him backward, her smile only growing wider as he failed to stop her.

"Come on. I'll help you sleep on it," she said coyly.

John allowed a genuine smile to cross his face as he felt her warm hands touch his cold, bare skin, a slight shiver running through him at the contact. He wouldn't forget about Cortana in a night, not even with Linda to help him, but maybe she could at least take away some of the sting of her death and convince him that life would go on all the same.

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 **Bravo Zulu: Good Job**


	2. Chapter 2: Forget me

**AN: This Chapter goes out to my friend Ladyreclaimer. She's an amazing writer and you should all go check her out if you like JohnxCortana stuff.**

 **Enjoy!**

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Despite Linda's best efforts, John hardly slept at all.

He laid next to her for hours, the warm skin of her back pressed to his and her red hair brushing gently against his neck and his face, which made him feel drowsy. However, when he tried to close his eyes and catch some real sleep, it eluded him. Visions of Cortana still ripped through his mind, and trying to sleep only exacerbated them.

"We were supposed to protect each other," she said to him as his eyes closed.

He couldn't stand it any more. He needed to get out and clear his mind, but he didn't want to wake Linda. He hadn't seen her sleep this well in all the years he had known her. He didn't want her waking up cold and alone on her first night of having him back. He got up and got dressed before pulling the thin sheet of his bed up to Linda's neck, hoping it would keep her warm until he got back, and then pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"I love you," he whispered to her, hoping she would hear it subconsciously.

He headed back to Spartan town, avoiding the gazes of most onlookers. Although he received a couple of admiring glances, it seemed as though word had gotten out that he didn't appreciate the fanfare, and most of the passing personnel left him alone.

He donned his armor once again with the help of several techs. Even though he knew he should probably start to get used to not wearing it, he still felt ten times more secure in his armor, and thinking felt a whole lot easier in its familiar environment. It cut him off from stimulation and allowed him to focus. He made his way to _Infinity's_ observation deck so he could do just that.

He stared off at the picturesque view of earth and conjured up every memory he had of Cortana and tried to forced them down, and forget them. He imagined each one of them as a burning picture, being slowly destroyed so that they would no longer hurt him with their lingering presence.

Since he had never had time to grieve in the past, this was what he had taught himself to do. It was quick, mostly painless, and effective until he would inevitably have to do it again and banish the memories from his mind.

His grieving was interrupted, however, by the sound of footsteps behind him. Whoever it was was trying to approach him quietly, which was not a good idea. Thankfully he had heard them and not been startled, or else he might have reacted harshly.

He didn't look back at them, hoping they would go away if they believed he hadn't noticed them, but the footsteps he wanted to hear never transpired.

"Mind if I join you?" Asked captain Lasky.

John spun around and looked at him, his armor hiding the pain that he couldn't mask in his expression. He wanted to tell him to leave, but he knew he would simply return another time, and besides, he was an officer. John had no right to refuse him.

"Of course not sir," he said simply.

Lasky gave him a sideways look. He looked quite uncomfortable under the gaze of the Spartan.

"At ease, Chief, it feels kind of odd for you to call me sir."

John nodded.

It seemed as though even the captain had wrapped him up into this hero complex the UNSC had bestowed upon him.

"Beautiful, isn't she? I don't get to see her often enough. I grew up on New Harmony, attended Corbulo Military Academy. Never saw earth in person until I was an adult, but I still think of her as home."

John saw no question worth answering in Lasky's statement. Maybe he was trying to get at a time long past when they had met, the night he had extracted him from CAMS. Lasky would probably be surprised he remembered him, but there was little John forgot.

It was a blessing and a curse, and it only served to remind John that forgetting Cortana would be next to impossible.

"You don't talk much, do you?" Continued Lasky.

John wanted to stop him right there.

He knew where this conversation was going. He didn't need comforting for Cortana's death, and he certainly didn't need to be reminded of it again. He fought back the fresh memories of her dissolving before him and vanishing from existence.

What he needed was to forget, and the longer Lasky stayed the harder he knew that would become.

"Chief, I won't even pretend to know how you feel. I've lost people I care about, but never anything your going through."

Lasky was right. He truly did have no idea, and he didn't need to. It wasn't important that others knew how he felt, only that he was able to keep his emotions under control and complete the task at hand.

"Our duty as soldiers is to protect humanity," he deadpanned, "whatever the cost."

He hoped his bluntness would convince the captain to leave, but it seemed to have quiet the opposite effect.

Lasky looked at him with sad eyes and sighed. He seemed as though he was fighting to find words to convince John that he should allow himself to feel, and failing badly.

"You say that like solders and humanity are two different things," he spat, "soldiers aren't machines, we're just people."

John knew Lasky's intentions were noble, but he had no idea what kind of soldier he had been created to be.

He had had his humanity stripped down to its core and destroyed. If he was human he would have know how to grieve. He only knew how to forget.

Lasky sighed and seemed to just give up, before turning and walking away.

"I'll let you have the deck to yourself," he said as he left, and John was grateful.

Cortana had been right about what he was. He truly was a machine. That was something the captain could not understand.

"She said that to me once, about being a machine," he said absentmindedly, hoping the captain would be close enough to hear it.

What he heard instead, was more footsteps, slightly heavier this time.

He turned and found Linda standing behind him dressed in fatigue pants and tank top that showed her many, jagged scars.

His heart leapt when he saw her. He expected, and almost hoped she would be angry with him for leaving her all alone, but her sniper's patience still remained in her eyes as she looked upon his armored form with extreme sadness.

"John?" She asked, "what are you doing out so late?"

He sighed and turned back to the window. Grieving would have been difficult with the captain nearby, but with Linda so close to him it would be impossible. His mind began to drift back to the last time he had left her to go alone, and how she had wound up dead in low orbit above Reach, cold, alone, and betrayed. Old memories like that brought long buried guilt boiling back up to the surface, and made it even harder to forget new ones.

He wanted to turn her away, but he wouldn't. She hadn't deserved to be left alone like he had. He would find another time to grieve.

"Linda, It's nothing. I promise I didn't want you to..." He said, trying to find the words to apologize, but she held up a hand silently to stop him.

Even though he knew he had caused her pain, she still forgave him. She was always more patient and more persistent than he deserved. She walked slowly and quietly to his side and wrapped her arm around his bicep, resting her head on his cold, armored shoulder and sighing.

"How are you feeling?" She asked flatly.

Although she didn't say it, And don't lie to me, was heavily implied.

John stayed silent for a while longer and tried to make heads or tails of how he was feeling. Awful didn't begin to describe it.

Cortana's death had hit him on a level that no one but Linda even knew he had. He wasn't sure how to describe what he had felt for her, but it was deep.

After a while even Linda began to give up on getting an answer out of him.

"Hey, if you really don't want to talk about it, I won't force you," she said, placing a hand on the side of his helmet gently.

He could here the disappointment in her voice, however. She wanted to heal him and to help him. She wanted to know everything that hurt him, but he wasn't sure he was ready to let her.

He shook his head and tried to force the words he wanted to come out. Her own comfort was more important than his own, even when it came to matters like this.

"I can't forget her," he said quietly, "I'm supposed to be able to push on past this sort of thing, but I just can't."

Safe in the knowledge that his helmet hid his expression, he let his head drop slightly. Had Linda been able to see under his helmet, she would no doubt have been very concerned for him. His face was contorted with sadness in a way he had never allowed it to be in the past. The pain was too much. He had given up on hiding it any longer.

Why was this so hard? Why did his training fail him when he needed it most?

Linda, however, didn't seem to see what the problem was. Just when he expected her to feel sad she smiled up at him. It was a bright, beautiful smile that made him feel warm in spite of the cold he had felt since Cortana's death.

"Why would you want to do that?" She said as she placed her other, free hand on his helmet's other side so that she was framed in the center of his vision.

"I can't deal with the pain," he said somberly.

That was something he had struggled to admit to in the past. He was a spartan. He could handle anything. He had been shot, burned, tortured, and ripped apart from the inside out, so why did something like this cut him on a level of himself he barely knew existed.

She frowned and shook her head. In spite of how confusing the situation was for John, Linda seemed to understand, as she always did. Without her guidance and patience, he wondered where he would be now. He might have simply given up the will to fight. In his mind, whether anyone knew it or not, that made Linda the true savior of humanity.

"John, she was a part of you," she said kindly, "and you loved her, just as you loved me."

John looked at her oddly. Was that really what he felt for Cortana? Love? How could he love anyone else other than Linda?

Linda let out a small, clipped, laugh, something she didn't do often. Her smile widened slightly, but part of her looked sad at John's lack of understanding.

"It's ok to love her John," she said quietly, "there's nothing wrong with it. You're a human being. It's what human beings do. I know it hurts to remember her, but you won't feel any better if you try to forget someone who was so important to you. One day you'll look back and remember her fondly. I promise."

John was ready to fight her statement, to insist that the pain was too great, but instead he just gave up. Linda always knew what to say at times like these, and she was right. He had felt nothing less for love than Cortana. Somehow his love for Cortana was different than his love for his love for Linda, but it was no less strong.

She slowly moved her hands to the back of his helmet and unlatched it, letting it fall to the floor in front of her with a dull thud, revealing John's bloodshot eyes and even expression.

To anyone else, his expression wouldn't have betrayed much, but Linda had learned to read him like an open book.

"She'd want you to remember her fondly John. There's nothing wrong with that."

John nodded and Linda leaned up to place a quick kiss on his lips. His armor made the action awkward, but it soothed him none the less to at least know that Linda was still here with him.

When they broke he held her close and continued to gaze off into the distance at earth, the planet, or rather the idea, he had fought to protect his entire life. Earth's delicate ecosystems and thriving population had always and would always represent humanity in all of brokenness and frailty, but also its compassion and its will to go on. There would be others that would try to challenge that, but he would be there to defend it, and if it wasn't him, or Cortana, or Linda who stood in the way of those who threatened earth it would be someone else. Life would go on just as it always had, and the job of remembering what Earth stood for would be left to those still living.

For now, remembering humanity was his job, and he would remembering love Cortana as one of many who had taught him to be human.

He glanced down at Linda and allowed a genuine smile to cross his face.

At least he had someone to remind him that under all his machine and nerve there was still flesh and faith that drove him.


	3. Chapter 3: flowers and adrenaline

**AN: Hey guys, this is back finally. Sorry so much for the delay, but I've been working on two other stories and this has really taken the back burner as a result. Hopefully this moves things along a little better.**

 **Enjoy!**

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Kelly walked slowly through the flat, grassy field that seemed to extend for miles before her, struggling to maintain Fred's slow pace as they plodded along in sync. Kelly wanted nothing more right now than to have a few words with whatever overzealous, air head officer had assigned her and Fred to such a boring op.

Who in their right mind would send two Spartans on a scientific mission to a potential agricultural planet covered in nothing but grass, trees, and maybe some occasional local wildlife that mostly consisted of small predators and creatures that was content to keep their distance from the Spartans? She knew the war was effectively over, but certainly there was something, anything more important to do than this!

She bounced on the balls of her feet, trying desperately to contain her impatience. She was itching for a fight, or at very least something other than walking in a straight line for hours on "scouting missions" for the convoy that was following them.

They didn't walk for too much longer before Fred stopped dead in his tracks and snapped his head froward as though he had seen something. He began to scan the horizon, as though tracking something he had spotted. Kelly dropped to her stomach and settled her battle rifle into her shoulder to get ready to shoot if necessary.

"What did you see Fred?" she shouted as she began to scan the horizon through her scope.

Her adrenaline was pounding.

Maybe Fred had seen a Covenant landing party. This planet did border on the boundary lines of their old empire. It was a prefect place for some of the Covenant remnant to try and set up shop.

Boy were they about to have a bad day. The only thing worse than fighting Kelly was fighting Kelly when her adrenaline had had too long to build up.

When Fred didn't respond she looked up and found his armored faceplate staring down at her strangely. He removed his helmet and revealed a look of utter confusion.

"What makes you think I saw anything?" He asked quizzically.

Kelly twitched angrily before sighing and giving up. She wasn't going to get the adrenaline release she needed any time soon.

"Then why did you stop?" She asked before clipping her rifle to her back and sitting up.

Fred smiled and looked out over the plains once again before taking a deep breath of the planet's humid air.

"No reason. Just taking a moment to enjoy the view."

Kelly groaned exasperatedly and pulled off her helmet.

She was done with scenery and plains. She needed a fight, or something exciting to help her vent her adrenaline.

Fred looked over at her sulking form and laughed quietly.

"Don't worry. I promise when we get back to _Infinity_ we'll head over to war games first thing."

He had a hopeful grin on his face that Kelly enjoyed seeing way to much. Fred had always been kind to her in his own strange way. If only kelly had a a better way of showing she appreciated it. Unfortunately, affection had never seemed to be her area of expertise. Her dark sense of humor had always dominated it.

Kelly smiled wickedly.

"Big mistake," she said with a laugh, "fighting with me when I have this much energy is never a good idea."

He nodded.

"At least Linda will help even the odds. last time I checked you still can't out run a bullet."

Kelly raised and eyebrow and smirked.

"I haven't _yet_ outrun a bullet," she said, her voice with an air of challenge.

Fred, however, didn't respond. He was looking down at his wrist gauntlet with an utterly shocked expression.

He quickly slapped his helmet on and looked blankly forward. Kelly could tell something important had come in on his long range coms.

She picked up her helmet as well and powered it up. Immediately a message from Linda came in. It had an image attached and no message.

When Kelly opened the file she found a picture of Linda and John standing together on the flight deck of the _Infinity_.

Kelly deduced that it was a publicity photo taken by the UNSC press corps, considering that they were both in armor and not touching each other.

She laughed quietly at that thought. Despite how discreet those two thought they were, they had never been able to keep their relationship a secret from any of the spartans. Officers were either too ignorant to realize Spartans could have feelings like that, or looked the other way, although the former was more likely. Still though, they were both glancing towards each other. Linda was smiling, and although it was barely visible, Kelly could see the tiny smile that rested on John's lips.

"That can't be..." Said Fred, sounding almost speechless.

Kelly jumped up off the ground and cheered.

"I knew he was out there somewhere. You can't kill John that easily."

Fred nodded and pulled off his helmet, smiling off into the distance once again, but Kelly kept hers on and continued to stare blankly at the picture. The both of them looked so glad to be near each other even though it was a canned picture. Even though Kelly professed that she didn't do sappy love, she really was happy for them. She still wasn't sure what love was, if she had ever seen love, it had been between John and Linda.

Fred looked over at her and raised an eyebrow.

"You doing ok?" He asked.

She smiled beneath her helmet and nodded.

"I don't know, the two of them just seem so, happy."

She dropped her head and smiled at the ground, "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous."

Fred's smile broadened, and he grabbed a wildflower from a patch in the grass nearby and stood. He held it out to her for her to take.

"Well, I don't see why we can't all be happy with each other," he said with a sideways smile.

Kelly accepted the flower and looked up at him with confusion. Did he just hit on her? After all these years of being professional did Fred want something more? To be honest, Kelly was surprised sometimes that he hadn't in the past. He seemed a whole lot more ready for it than John did. Still it unnerved her.

Before she could say a word, however, Fred had already replaced his helmet and begun to walk away.

 _Oh no you don't_ , thought Kelly.

Fred had already caused her to build up enough adrenaline to level half this planet. She wasn't going to let him get away with something like that without an explanation, even if she had to beat it out of him.

* * *

 **AN: So, let me know what you think of KellyxFred. This kind of light hearted/borderline comical kind of stuff is very new to me. I'd love you thoughts.**


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